January 10, 2013 at 12:14The tale continues ... The structure of Homo informaticus
The beginning of the story is here
Caravanserai: tables full of food, carpet on the walls, dirty floor. From a corner, a Buddha statue is looking at visitors. Prince Calaf and the sages of the Divan sample drinks, smoke hookah and talk.
Sages : Prince, you promised to refute solipsism. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Calaf : Well, this is trivial. Remember the recent conversation in the palace. I argued that each subject must be identified, that is, to assign a separate identifier to it. What for?
Sages : To distinguish one subject from another.
Calaf : That's right ... Do you distinguish yourself?
Sages : What kind of question ?! Each of us has our own "I", which allows us to distinguish ourselves from other people.
Calaf: It turns out that each of you, like any other creature, is assigned a separate identifier?
Sages : Thank Buddha! Buddha is great!
Bow to the buddha statue.
Calaf : So, does your own “I” exist in order to distinguish you from other creatures that also have their own “I”?
Sages : Well, yes. Exactly.
Calaf : So why the hell do you, who have their own "I", need a refutation of solipsism, has it not already been refuted ?! What does solipsism claim? He claims that only your “I” exists, and no other “I” exists. However, in this case, the one who created our universe ...
Wise men : Buddha?
Calaf: Yeah, Buddha! .. So, in this case - if only your “I” existed, the Buddha would not need to identify you. It is the presence of your own "I" as the identifier of the subject that proves the existence of other "I", because it is impossible to consider the Buddha stumbling, which creates the universe without a proper understanding of its structure ?!
Wise men : What you, prince, of course, is impossible! We understood and agree. Now, if someone hints at our presence about solipsism, we will laugh in his face and exclaim: “My own“ I ”says the opposite! Buddha is great! ”
The author warns!
The past adventures of Prince Calaf were rather vividly discussed on Habré. During the discussion, a lot of fascinating guesses were expressed - in particular, that the author of the post:
a) asshole,
b) donkey,
c) troll.
I would like to believe that the charges brought do not meet Popper’s falsifiability criterion. Nevertheless, in order to avoid consequences, I ask you not to read this post to people suffering from epileptic seizures, as well as to graduates of physical and mathematical schools who are unable to imagine that matter is also information. To confirm that you understand and agree, click cat. If your technical education does not allow you to put up with it, but you want to read, ask to poke your wife or child - they still don’t understand a damn thing, it’s excusable.
Yes, reading is also not recommended for people without a sense of humor. Please confirm.
Kalaf : Solipsism sorted out, glory to the Buddha.
Sages : You are so smart, prince ...
Calaf ( modestly ): Yes, I am.
Sages : Could you imagine a more complete structure of your informational person?
Calaf : Tomorrow morning I am leaving Beijing, but I will try to be in time. To begin with, where I stopped in a conversation with Princess Turandot. The informational person system has three identifiers denoting the internal structure, and signs related to the beyond.
Sages : Yes, yes, we remember.
Calaf : I explain: not everyone has their own table, as you might think, but there is a common table of the universe, in which each of us is indicated by its own identifier.
Draws a twig on a dirty floor.
Each object in the table of the universe is a set of its perceptions from the subjects.
Sages : We understand.
Calaf : We ’ve sorted out the identifiers, we turn to the signs. As I explained earlier, the signs for the system are transcendental, introduced from the outside, that cannot be defined in the system in any way. In this example, this is the name of the object. During my explanations to the princess, I heard someone in the crowd shouting about the illegality of using the thesaurus in solving the problem of “hyponym-hyperonym”. You know, this screamer is right: there can be no verbal meanings in the table of the universe.
Sages : And then what is there?
Calaf : That is the only beyond that is accessible to man.
Wise men: What? What is this?
Calaf : Sensations, needless to say. Five sensations are available to a person: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. It is they who fill the world around a person with the content, while everything else - I mean identifiers - only structures this content. This is how the table of the universe should look in a more complete form.
Draws.
How can one characterize an orange as a material object? Like something spherical and orange, not making sounds, having a pleasant smell and taste. The data of our sensory organs are initial, they cannot be somehow determined from the information system itself, because they are transcendental. Therefore, being for us is our sensations.
Wise men: It's hard to deny. But it seems to us, dear prince, your information is not enough. In this system, the man himself, in particular the human body, is lacking, because along with our own "I", set by the identifier ID_3, each of us also perceives our own body as belonging to him and no one else.
Calaf : You are absolutely right ... if you don’t know how identifiers and attributes relate to each other.
Sages : And how do they relate?
Calaf: Each identifier that defines the internal structure corresponds to a set of features that define the external content. Because it is content that can be structured: identifiers themselves are meaningless, since in this case they define an empty system. ID_2 is a reference to ID_1, therefore, we need to establish the signs that correspond with the identifiers ID_1 and ID_3. What suggestions are there?
Sages : This is so unexpected ... You need to think ...
Calaf : You will think tomorrow when I leave Beijing. Okay, I won’t bother buddies - the signs correspond with identifiers as follows.
Draws arrows to the picture.
Sages : Do you have evidence or is this wisdom incomprehensible to mortals?
Calaf: What is incomprehensible there! You simply did not think about this topic, but think about it, and everything will become clear as twice two. People feel exactly the same, in this sense it is easy for them to agree among themselves. Is it not obvious that, for example, vision gives an idea of objects, but at the same time - no idea of a subject? When you observe an object visually, it is in any case an object, but by no means a subject: visually, this bowl or hookah ( points to them ) are exactly the same objects as my arm or leg ( demonstrates ). If you focus on vision, to establish where my body and where are the objects surrounding it, I can only mentally.
Sages : Perhaps so.
Calaf: On the other hand, features that correlate with subject ID_3 in charge only show the subject. For example, touch. Do you really think that tactile sensations are perceived by the skin because there are corresponding receptors on the skin?
Wise men : Well ... actually we consider.
Calaf: Oh, don’t tell my soles! Maybe the other way around? Does touch relate to subjectivity, so does everything that you perceive tactfully belong to your body? Feel the difference: vision refers to objectivity, so any visual image is an object, and touch refers to subjectivity, so any tactile perception is a subject. The same with other sensations: some belong to objectivity and characterize objects external to you, while others relate to subjectivity and characterize you as a subject. And this subject is not some identifier there, but a quite material body with arms and legs.
He draws on a dirty floor with a twig - something very simple, like this:
With one sensation, a person perceives his body as a subject, with other sensations - the external object world surrounding himself, as a result of which a person appears in his usual mental object-subjective shell.
Sages : What an unexpected turn! However, prince, you are missing an important detail.
Calaf : Which one?
Sages : Uma.
Calaf : Hinting I'm an asshole? We know, we heard ...
Sages : That you, dear prince, we allude to the lack of thinking in your concept.
Calaf : Indeed, I forgot about thinking. Well, of course, of course ... The fact is that the table of the universe is not one - there are two of them, and the carriers are at different levels.
Sages : How so?
Calaf : When we took as an axiom the informational character of our universe, we thereby removed the carrier of this information from our area of competence. The universe, including us, is information. Probably, this information is recorded on some medium - we are obliged to assume this, since in our world information is always recorded on a material medium. But on which medium our universe is written, we can never establish, because the medium is outside our system. This is known to the one who created our information system - Buddha ...
Everyone looks at the Buddha in the corner and bow.
However, within the framework of our information system, matter is just matter given to us in sensations, which can be used as a material carrier. It is used, not only by people in writing, but also by the Buddha himself, when he programmed people to self-propagate by his gracious decision.
Sages : You want to say that the human brain is a system in a system?
Calaf : This view is almost consistent with ordinary perception. Thoughts are really written in the brain, thereby we have one information system, consisting of elements of another information system, which is why I claim that these are systems of different levels.
Wise men: Sorry, but if matter is information, what we agreed on ... how can one get another information system from the elements of one information system?
Calaf : Nothing is easier. Imagine a symbol belonging to one information system. Let it be the character “A”.
Sages : Introduced.
Calaf : Now, take a lot of hieroglyphs “A” and lay out a large hieroglyph “B” from them. Is it not possible?
Sages : Perhaps, of course.
Calaf: The resulting systems will be information systems of different levels: at the lower level there are many hieroglyphs “A”, and at the upper level there is one large hieroglyph “B”. This allows us to understand why the human brain is so complicated: to achieve a given complexity, you have to use a huge number of elements. Thus, the whole universe is twofold: it is the first table that has the structure described above and is responsible for the display of the material world, and at the same time the second table, which is responsible for the display of thinking and is composed of the elements of the first table.
Which, again, corresponds to the conventional notions that the world is divided into material and mental.
Sages : And what is the structure of the second table?
Calaf: And if I say that I do not know?
Sages ( disappointed ): Oooh!
Calaf : Calm, I have some thoughts on this. First of all ... But what kind of noise is there?
In fact, a female screech is heard nearby, then fuss, then people with broad broadswords burst into the caravanserai, in black bandages covering their faces.
People with broadswords : Everyone stay on the ground! Special operation!
All freeze in place.
Kalaf (to the sages ): What kind of warriors are these?
Sages : Imperial Guard.
Imperial Guard ( at the sight of Prince a): Ah, there he is! .. The rest, get out of here! Scatter who is told!
The rest scatter in fear.
Calaf ( in unpleasant amazement ): So you are looking for me, worthy?
Imperial Guard : You, you ... It is ordered to find and deliver to the palace, to Princess Turandot.
Calaf : Ah, there it is! (To the Sages ). Listen, dear ones, does your emperor have no younger daughter, not with such a scum character?
Sages : Unfortunately, dear prince.
Calaf : Ah, hell ... That's how I felt that I won’t have time to think about how I felt.
Imperial Guard : Well, what got up? Hands behind your head and go.
A minute later, no one was left in the caravanserai, one impenetrable stone Buddha in the corner. Suddenly, the lips of the statue parted in a sly smile, and Buddha uttered under his breath:
Buddha : Here is an impudent son of a bitch! But he almost guessed, almost guessed!
Caravanserai: tables full of food, carpet on the walls, dirty floor. From a corner, a Buddha statue is looking at visitors. Prince Calaf and the sages of the Divan sample drinks, smoke hookah and talk.
Sages : Prince, you promised to refute solipsism. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Calaf : Well, this is trivial. Remember the recent conversation in the palace. I argued that each subject must be identified, that is, to assign a separate identifier to it. What for?
Sages : To distinguish one subject from another.
Calaf : That's right ... Do you distinguish yourself?
Sages : What kind of question ?! Each of us has our own "I", which allows us to distinguish ourselves from other people.
Calaf: It turns out that each of you, like any other creature, is assigned a separate identifier?
Sages : Thank Buddha! Buddha is great!
Bow to the buddha statue.
Calaf : So, does your own “I” exist in order to distinguish you from other creatures that also have their own “I”?
Sages : Well, yes. Exactly.
Calaf : So why the hell do you, who have their own "I", need a refutation of solipsism, has it not already been refuted ?! What does solipsism claim? He claims that only your “I” exists, and no other “I” exists. However, in this case, the one who created our universe ...
Wise men : Buddha?
Calaf: Yeah, Buddha! .. So, in this case - if only your “I” existed, the Buddha would not need to identify you. It is the presence of your own "I" as the identifier of the subject that proves the existence of other "I", because it is impossible to consider the Buddha stumbling, which creates the universe without a proper understanding of its structure ?!
Wise men : What you, prince, of course, is impossible! We understood and agree. Now, if someone hints at our presence about solipsism, we will laugh in his face and exclaim: “My own“ I ”says the opposite! Buddha is great! ”
The author warns!
The past adventures of Prince Calaf were rather vividly discussed on Habré. During the discussion, a lot of fascinating guesses were expressed - in particular, that the author of the post:
a) asshole,
b) donkey,
c) troll.
I would like to believe that the charges brought do not meet Popper’s falsifiability criterion. Nevertheless, in order to avoid consequences, I ask you not to read this post to people suffering from epileptic seizures, as well as to graduates of physical and mathematical schools who are unable to imagine that matter is also information. To confirm that you understand and agree, click cat. If your technical education does not allow you to put up with it, but you want to read, ask to poke your wife or child - they still don’t understand a damn thing, it’s excusable.
Yes, reading is also not recommended for people without a sense of humor. Please confirm.
Kalaf : Solipsism sorted out, glory to the Buddha.
Sages : You are so smart, prince ...
Calaf ( modestly ): Yes, I am.
Sages : Could you imagine a more complete structure of your informational person?
Calaf : Tomorrow morning I am leaving Beijing, but I will try to be in time. To begin with, where I stopped in a conversation with Princess Turandot. The informational person system has three identifiers denoting the internal structure, and signs related to the beyond.
Sages : Yes, yes, we remember.
Calaf : I explain: not everyone has their own table, as you might think, but there is a common table of the universe, in which each of us is indicated by its own identifier.
Draws a twig on a dirty floor.
Each object in the table of the universe is a set of its perceptions from the subjects.
Sages : We understand.
Calaf : We ’ve sorted out the identifiers, we turn to the signs. As I explained earlier, the signs for the system are transcendental, introduced from the outside, that cannot be defined in the system in any way. In this example, this is the name of the object. During my explanations to the princess, I heard someone in the crowd shouting about the illegality of using the thesaurus in solving the problem of “hyponym-hyperonym”. You know, this screamer is right: there can be no verbal meanings in the table of the universe.
Sages : And then what is there?
Calaf : That is the only beyond that is accessible to man.
Wise men: What? What is this?
Calaf : Sensations, needless to say. Five sensations are available to a person: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. It is they who fill the world around a person with the content, while everything else - I mean identifiers - only structures this content. This is how the table of the universe should look in a more complete form.
Draws.
How can one characterize an orange as a material object? Like something spherical and orange, not making sounds, having a pleasant smell and taste. The data of our sensory organs are initial, they cannot be somehow determined from the information system itself, because they are transcendental. Therefore, being for us is our sensations.
Wise men: It's hard to deny. But it seems to us, dear prince, your information is not enough. In this system, the man himself, in particular the human body, is lacking, because along with our own "I", set by the identifier ID_3, each of us also perceives our own body as belonging to him and no one else.
Calaf : You are absolutely right ... if you don’t know how identifiers and attributes relate to each other.
Sages : And how do they relate?
Calaf: Each identifier that defines the internal structure corresponds to a set of features that define the external content. Because it is content that can be structured: identifiers themselves are meaningless, since in this case they define an empty system. ID_2 is a reference to ID_1, therefore, we need to establish the signs that correspond with the identifiers ID_1 and ID_3. What suggestions are there?
Sages : This is so unexpected ... You need to think ...
Calaf : You will think tomorrow when I leave Beijing. Okay, I won’t bother buddies - the signs correspond with identifiers as follows.
Draws arrows to the picture.
Sages : Do you have evidence or is this wisdom incomprehensible to mortals?
Calaf: What is incomprehensible there! You simply did not think about this topic, but think about it, and everything will become clear as twice two. People feel exactly the same, in this sense it is easy for them to agree among themselves. Is it not obvious that, for example, vision gives an idea of objects, but at the same time - no idea of a subject? When you observe an object visually, it is in any case an object, but by no means a subject: visually, this bowl or hookah ( points to them ) are exactly the same objects as my arm or leg ( demonstrates ). If you focus on vision, to establish where my body and where are the objects surrounding it, I can only mentally.
Sages : Perhaps so.
Calaf: On the other hand, features that correlate with subject ID_3 in charge only show the subject. For example, touch. Do you really think that tactile sensations are perceived by the skin because there are corresponding receptors on the skin?
Wise men : Well ... actually we consider.
Calaf: Oh, don’t tell my soles! Maybe the other way around? Does touch relate to subjectivity, so does everything that you perceive tactfully belong to your body? Feel the difference: vision refers to objectivity, so any visual image is an object, and touch refers to subjectivity, so any tactile perception is a subject. The same with other sensations: some belong to objectivity and characterize objects external to you, while others relate to subjectivity and characterize you as a subject. And this subject is not some identifier there, but a quite material body with arms and legs.
He draws on a dirty floor with a twig - something very simple, like this:
With one sensation, a person perceives his body as a subject, with other sensations - the external object world surrounding himself, as a result of which a person appears in his usual mental object-subjective shell.
Sages : What an unexpected turn! However, prince, you are missing an important detail.
Calaf : Which one?
Sages : Uma.
Calaf : Hinting I'm an asshole? We know, we heard ...
Sages : That you, dear prince, we allude to the lack of thinking in your concept.
Calaf : Indeed, I forgot about thinking. Well, of course, of course ... The fact is that the table of the universe is not one - there are two of them, and the carriers are at different levels.
Sages : How so?
Calaf : When we took as an axiom the informational character of our universe, we thereby removed the carrier of this information from our area of competence. The universe, including us, is information. Probably, this information is recorded on some medium - we are obliged to assume this, since in our world information is always recorded on a material medium. But on which medium our universe is written, we can never establish, because the medium is outside our system. This is known to the one who created our information system - Buddha ...
Everyone looks at the Buddha in the corner and bow.
However, within the framework of our information system, matter is just matter given to us in sensations, which can be used as a material carrier. It is used, not only by people in writing, but also by the Buddha himself, when he programmed people to self-propagate by his gracious decision.
Sages : You want to say that the human brain is a system in a system?
Calaf : This view is almost consistent with ordinary perception. Thoughts are really written in the brain, thereby we have one information system, consisting of elements of another information system, which is why I claim that these are systems of different levels.
Wise men: Sorry, but if matter is information, what we agreed on ... how can one get another information system from the elements of one information system?
Calaf : Nothing is easier. Imagine a symbol belonging to one information system. Let it be the character “A”.
Sages : Introduced.
Calaf : Now, take a lot of hieroglyphs “A” and lay out a large hieroglyph “B” from them. Is it not possible?
Sages : Perhaps, of course.
Calaf: The resulting systems will be information systems of different levels: at the lower level there are many hieroglyphs “A”, and at the upper level there is one large hieroglyph “B”. This allows us to understand why the human brain is so complicated: to achieve a given complexity, you have to use a huge number of elements. Thus, the whole universe is twofold: it is the first table that has the structure described above and is responsible for the display of the material world, and at the same time the second table, which is responsible for the display of thinking and is composed of the elements of the first table.
Which, again, corresponds to the conventional notions that the world is divided into material and mental.
Sages : And what is the structure of the second table?
Calaf: And if I say that I do not know?
Sages ( disappointed ): Oooh!
Calaf : Calm, I have some thoughts on this. First of all ... But what kind of noise is there?
In fact, a female screech is heard nearby, then fuss, then people with broad broadswords burst into the caravanserai, in black bandages covering their faces.
People with broadswords : Everyone stay on the ground! Special operation!
All freeze in place.
Kalaf (to the sages ): What kind of warriors are these?
Sages : Imperial Guard.
Imperial Guard ( at the sight of Prince a): Ah, there he is! .. The rest, get out of here! Scatter who is told!
The rest scatter in fear.
Calaf ( in unpleasant amazement ): So you are looking for me, worthy?
Imperial Guard : You, you ... It is ordered to find and deliver to the palace, to Princess Turandot.
Calaf : Ah, there it is! (To the Sages ). Listen, dear ones, does your emperor have no younger daughter, not with such a scum character?
Sages : Unfortunately, dear prince.
Calaf : Ah, hell ... That's how I felt that I won’t have time to think about how I felt.
Imperial Guard : Well, what got up? Hands behind your head and go.
A minute later, no one was left in the caravanserai, one impenetrable stone Buddha in the corner. Suddenly, the lips of the statue parted in a sly smile, and Buddha uttered under his breath:
Buddha : Here is an impudent son of a bitch! But he almost guessed, almost guessed!